9 apps every college student should be using

Koji Sasahara/AP

As fall approaches, the weather cools off. Pumpkin Spice Lattés make their much anticipated return. And college students head back to campus.

One of the most useful back-to-school supplies might be something students already keep in their back pocket: a smartphone. A well stocked app suite help students connect with new friends, keep organized, and stay informed.

Here are the must-have apps for college students this fall.

CamScanner brings homework into the 21st century.

Say you write a homework assignment by hand and don't have time to type it up before submitting it on the class website. CamScanner lets users take pictures of their homework (or anything) and order the sequence of shots. It then consolidates the images in a single PDF.

It beats handing in nothing.

Find it here.

Slack reinvents communication for student-run organizations.

Silicon Valley's favorite team communication app has hit campuses nationwide.

At Stanford, the student entrepreneurship association, BASES, relies on Slack to get stuff done. Every team in the organization has a channel, and when a special event arises, administrators create a new channel.

Slack helps eliminate emails and increases transparency across the group.

Find it here.

SideWire is a news aggregator that cuts out the noise.

SideWire is a platform that lets conversations from people whose opinions you actually want to hear float to the surface.

The news aggregator curates politics stories and attaches a live feed of insights from newsmakers — like journalists, speechwriters, and political pundits — to each link. It's kind of like Twitter for politics.

Find it here.